That, and according to the New England Aquarium, southern rockhoppers are unusual among penguins in that they will dive feet-first.

>> Not one but dozens of blindingly white-violet beams sprang forth,
>> lancing out not from her mouth but from all along the rows of plates
>> lining her spine and upper tail.
>
>That. I'd be more surprised by this attack except that there had been
>multiple mentions along the way that implied Shin Goji had an 'anti
>aircraft' setting.

Besides, it's straight out of the movie. The one in Shin Gojira is the only version I know of who can do that.

>Hang on... We've yet to see ANY non Friend animals other than
>Kaban...

Kaban is a Friend, she's just a human Friend, so it's hard to tell. :)

Off the top of my head, I can only think of one regular animal that appeared in the original anime season (an aardwolf, which is implied to be the remnant of a Friend who got eaten off-camera in the first episode, has a cameo in the last one), but they must exist in fair numbers in Japari Park, since Serval mentioned that she's expecting to see new Friends after the Sandstar eruption, and they only come from one place.

>The first time through I read this, I didn't realise it was the big
>reason Rhinox never Maximises until the two are back aboard. I'd
>assumed it was some sort of attempt to keep first contact issues under
>control.

Well, it's a reason. The contact considerations are a factor too, particularly since, after the incident in Renraku City, at least the Friends who witnessed Rampage aren't likely to react well to another robot.

>Would have been handy at the end of Season 1. Also, the food raid
>alluded here... was that something that only happened in the Manga?
>(or even the original game?)

It was in an audio drama that came out after the first series, explaining where that enormous bag of Japari Buns Kaban takes with her on her island expedition at the end came from. PPP stole requisitioned them as a surprise for her. :)

>> A moment later, the food machine's central compartment glowed and
>> dispensed a Japari Bun—rather forcefully dispensed, it, ejecting it
>> clean out of the machine and toward the middle of the room.
>
>This feels clunky from a sentence structure standpoint. But about the
>one thing I can think of that would improve it other than going all
>the way back to the drawing board would be just deleted the comma
>between dispensed and it.

Oh, yeah, that comma isn't supposed to be there.

>> Before anyone else could react, the slots behind the counters all along
>> the wall began to glow, and then they, too, started discharging Japari Buns
>> —one every second or so for the first few seconds, and then faster and
>> faster, until warm pastries were volleying forth like fire from dozens of
>> machine guns set in an arc all around the back half of the room.
>
>This would be the unusual behavior Lucky Beast area prime was
>referring too.

There's a race condition in the software where the production algorithm outruns the update to the distribution network and the interrupt fails, so that the machine tries to meet the expected production quota for all the terminals at once (which it shouldn't do anyway), but doesn't know how to route them to the remote stations yet, so they all come out at the origin facility. Presumably the developers would have debugged that if they'd had time to catch it in testing.

(Unless it's patched, that will happen every time the system is reset, so hopefully that won't need to be done very often. :)

>So, last thoughts. Works really well as a stand alone, yet still has
>stuff that could be mined for use in other projects.

Thanks! That was the basic idea.

Fun fact: This was originally going to be a mini-story. Seriously! Kaban and Serval were just going to find what they needed in the Admin Area, probably just by turning some stuff on, like it was a single side mission in a Fallout game. But where's the fun in that? Especially this close to the end of the semester? No, a 256-kilobyte story with a major guest star introduction was plainly what was really needed. Thanks, my brain! :)

(I bitch, but in the end I think it was worth it.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.